Let's Talk About Cake

My go-to conversation starter when I need to occupy a young child is, "Let's talk about cake." Whatever differences there may be between me and 3 year old (and there are many), we can at least agree on this much: Cake Is Awesome. It is amazing in so many different ways and flavors and there is always so much to discuss. Favorite color of cake? Favorite flavor of cake? Favorite size of cake? (ALWAYS big) Should there be layers of cake? Should the frosting and the cake be the same, or different? What are the best flavor combinations?

Today, let's talk about cake. Let's talk about Victoria sponge cake. Let's talk about Vic sponge with ganache (guh-NOSH) frosting. Let's talk about Vic sponge with ganache frosting in the shape of a HEDGEHOG, which may now be my very favorite shape of cake ever.

I made this cake and it was adorable and tasted wonderful and none of that was my doing because I was just following recipes, so let me give you the recipes so that you can do it too.

This video showed me how to make the 3-D shape, which is super simple. I couldn't find any appropriate candies for the spikes, so I just did the textured effect with a fork, which worked fine. I did the eyes and nose with a bit of melted white chocolate in a Ziploc bag with the tip cut off.

The cake is Mary Berry's Victoria sponge cake, but that recipe has the measurements by weight, which can be troublesome, so here it is in "American."

1 cup butter, softened
4 eggs
2 cups self-rising flour
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder

Preheat oven to 350. Line 2 round cake pans with foil or parchment paper. Spray with cooking spray/oil. Mix all the ingredients together and divide between the two cake pans, smoothing the tops so that they are flat. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool before lifting out of the pan and peeling off the foil or paper.

The ganache recipe was actually a combo of this one and that one, so let me tell you what I did.

2 cups heavy cream
24 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
24 oz milk chocolate chips

Heat cream until hot but not boiling. Stir in chocolate chips until chocolatey and smooth and wonderful. (Right up until it looks amazing, mixture will look manky and weird and worriesome. If it's looking chocolatey but still has lumps, your cream may have gotten a little too cool to melt the chocolate enough. Heat it a little more and keep stirring.) Put in the fridge until cool. Using a mixer, whip for 3 minutes.

This was exactly enough ganache frosting to frost this cake, however due to an error it has LOADS of frosting. When I was shaping the hedgehog I didn't carve the back of it to be rounded, so I just added ganache to make it the shape I wanted when I got to that point. Which is a completely valid solution, but this cake already had a very thick layer of frosting in order to get the textured effect, so the pieces in the back had a truly breathtaking amount of ganache. Maybe 2 and a half inches of frosting, on a 3 layers tall piece of cake. It was something like eating a triple portion of chocolate fudge with a side of cake.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Ahem.